Atomic.edu - TAFE or University

Christopher Taylor gets down and dirty with the pros and cons of two very different styles of tertiary education.

So, it’s come time to decide what you’re going to do with yourself after you leave school. You’re set on studying something to do with computers – coding, networking, whatever – but you’re unsure whether you should be heading to TAFE or university.

If you speak to your school’s careers advisor about it, you may be encouraged to aim for university. When it comes to certain IT fields, there’s a hell of a lot of merit in this advice. However, some schools do try and push their year twelves into university simply because it’ll let them tell the parents of the next batch of prospective students that yeah, last year they managed to see X per cent of their charges head into flashy degrees. By all means listen to what your careers advisor has to say, but keep in mind that it’s really up to you to research what system better suits your needs, wants and style of learning.

Educate yourself

One of the key points of difference between the two systems is what will be expected of you as a student. At university the tutors and lecturers aren’t teachers – they’re only there to facilitate your learning. They’ll point you in the right direction, tell you what chapter of the textbook to read and answer your questions, but ultimately, it’s up to you to get your shit together and learn. You won’t be prompted – and you shouldn’t need to be prompted – to take notes during lectures or hand the assignment in on time.

TAFE is nowhere near as harsh. While you won’t be coddled anywhere near as much as you were in school, the system is, for the most part, a little more forgiving. In university, the only work you ‘have’ to do in most subjects is the assignments and the exam; they’re what you’ll be marked on. On the other hand, subjects in TAFE courses tend to have a lot of little exercises that get handed in at the end of each lesson. Perhaps in the long-run you end up doing more work in a TAFE subject than you do in a university one, but at the same time it’s far harder to screw up in a major way because there’s much more of an opportunity to find out if you’re on the right track.